Antec, Inc., the global leader in high-performance computer components and accessories for the gaming, PC upgrade and Do-It-Yourself markets, announced today its official relationship with video game developer & publisher NCsoft Corporation and its subsequent activity at PAX (Penny Arcade Expo) Prime 2011.

Antec will commence its relationship with NCsoft by opening an online boutique which, in the coming weeks, will let consumers purchase enclosures featuring custom NCsoft artwork from the City of Heroes, Guild Wars, Aion and future franchises.

Antec and NCsoft will team up at PAX Prime August 26th through August 28th, 2011 in Seattle, WA. Antec’s booth will be the only locale on the show floor where attendees can demo NCsoft’s upcoming City of Heroes Freedom.

Antec will also showcase an enclosures gallery with custom NCsoft artwork as a preview for what attendees can eventually order online. One of these select cases, equipped with hardware from Intel, Zotac, Kingston and Seagate, will be raffled off as a complete gaming PC.

“NCsoft is pleased to team up with Antec to bring our visual imagery from our award-winning line up of MMORPGs to their fans,” said Steve Levy, Global Director, Publishing, at NCsoft. “This is a great collaboration that will allow Antec’s customers to select a high performance PC enclosure and create a work of art that they will be proud to display.”

“We’re excited to kick off this new venture with NCsoft and invite our fans to give more personality to their PCs,” said Matthew Bosma, Director of Sales at Antec. “It has been great working with NCsoft and we’re looking forward to showing off their beautiful artwork to our fans and their fans, too.”

This year marks Antec’s fourth consecutive appearance at PAX Prime, and together with NCsoft, Antec promises to make its most exciting appearance at PAX yet.

Attendees can expect to see the latest Antec products including the upcoming SOLO II enclosure, which presents the uncompromising balance of Quiet Computing and performance.

Antec will also be demoing the soundscience rockus 3D | 2.1 speaker system in a sound-insulated room within the booth. Attendees will have the pleasure of experiencing the rockus’s capabilities in Kinect Fruit Ninja.

Join Antec at the Washington State Convention Center from August 26th through August 28th, 2011 to experience the latest Antec product lineup and exciting activities. For more information visit www.antec.com/pax2011 or follow the official Antec Facebook page for event updates at www.facebook.com/AntecInc.

DICE was at Gamescom in Germany showing off an assortment of new Battlefield 3 details through their booth and a short keynote speech. The vast majority of the keynote consisted of the two speakers playing Battlefield 3 co-op on the console. Aside from the live co-op demo there was a trailer from a more classic Battlefield map inhabited with 64 players and fighter aircraft. Check it out below, preferably in high resolution and fullscreen. You can then check out the unofficial BF3Blog for the complete weapon list with claymores and mortar launchers.

So Call of Duty was leaving a bar and the pub server asked, “Gotta jet?”

It was also recently revealed that Battlefield 3 would be locked to 30 frames per second on the consoles which drew fire from Activision who runs their game at 60 FPS. Their claim was that the added framerate is required to have a more responsive experience. Unfortunately as our previous article reporting on Mozilla’s stance on responsiveness shows: it is not as simple as 33.3ms versus 16.7ms latencies. Even under the assumption that the framerate is at its maximum you cannot tell the exact duration between input and TV draw without the use of a high-speed camera looking at both player-controller and monitor. Many frames could go by without even looking at the input loop and all the other dependent code on parallel out-of-sync threads that finally alter the state of the threads that draws what you should see. Be careful what you read folks; while yes, higher framerate gives the higher potential for lower latency between press and draw it is not necessarily the case. All of that said we will be on the PC which has its own set of methodologies for how to handle multi-process (there are still latencies inherent with any multiprocess game, but with different limits) and thus this is entirely irrelevant to us, but still a good learning experience regardless.

Carmack Speaks

Last week we were in Dallas, Texas covering Quakecon 2011 as well as hosting our very own PC Perspective Hardware Workshop. While we had over 1100 attendees at the event and had a blast judging the case mod contest, one of the highlights of the event is always getting to sit down with John Carmack and pick his brain about topics of interest. We got about 30 minutes of John's time over the weekend and pestered him with questions about the GPU hardware race, how Intel's intergrated graphics (and AMD Fusion) fit in the future of PCs, the continuing debate about ray tracing, rasterization, voxels and infinite detail engines, key technologies for PC gamers like multi-display engines and a lot more!

One of our most read articles of all time was our previous interview with Carmack that focused a lot more on the ray tracing and rasterization debate. If you never read that, much of it is still very relevant today and is worth reading over.

This year though John has come full circle on several things including ray tracing, GPGPU workloads and even the advantages that console hardware has over PC gaming hardware.

Milpitas, Calif. – August 11, 2011 – GLOBALFOUNDRIES today announced the agenda for its second annual Global Technology Conference (GTC) on Tuesday, August 30 at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Santa Clara, Calif. GTC 2011 will be a seminal opportunity to learn about the vision and strategy of the new GLOBALFOUNDRIES leadership team, in addition to featuring executives and technologists from throughout the semiconductor ecosystem.

“In the past two months, I have spent a great deal of time working with and listening to our customers,” said Ajit Manocha, chief executive officer of GLOBALFOUNDRIES. “They are critical to our success, and we are committed to delivering the innovation and technology solutions that they are demanding from the foundry industry. We are excited to take this opportunity to update our customers, partners and the rest of the ecosystem on the business momentum we’ve achieved since GTC 2010 and particularly over the last few months.”

GTC 2011 will feature a keynote address by Manocha and presentations from other members of the GLOBALFOUNDRIES executive leadership as well as management and technical teams. The conference also will include a highlight from the previous year’s event—a panel discussion among senior executives in the EDA/IP ecosystem examining industry trends and challenges in leading-edge design enablement. Moderated by Mojy Chian, GLOBALFOUNDRIES senior vice president of design enablement, the panel will feature the following participants:

Aart de Geus, chairman of the board and chief executive officer, Synopsys

Robert Hum, vice president and general manager, Deep Submicron Division, Mentor Graphics

“At last year’s inaugural GTC event, we received a tremendous response from the industry as we outlined our plans to change the foundry landscape and revive competition at the leading edge,” said Jim Kupec, senior vice president of sales and marketing at GLOBALFOUNDRIES. “We have made a great deal of progress and overcome significant challenges to become the only foundry in volume production of leading-edge High-k Metal Gate (HKMG) technology. We look forward to sharing our successes and demonstrating our continued commitment to bringing a differentiated model to the foundry industry.”

In addition, GLOBALFOUNDRIES will present “Leading in Innovation” awards to customers and partners who are working with the company on products ranging from 0.35um non-volatile to 130nm and 65nm RFCMOS, and leading-edge 28nm technologies for processors and high-speed, low-power analog solutions. These awards epitomize the GTC 2011 theme of driving product innovation through true collaboration between GLOBALFOUNDRIES and its ecosystem partners on leading edge and mainstream CMOS technologies, as well as solutions for high voltage, embedded non-volatile memories, RF, analog, and MEMS.

GTC 2011 is expected to draw more than 1,500 people from around the world, including broad participation from key customers, suppliers, partners, industry analysts and media as well as the GLOBALFOUNDRIES leadership team. The Santa Clara event will kick off a series of GTC 2011 “Road Show” events to be held at other strategic international venues including:

September 14, Hsinchu, Taiwan

September 16, Shanghai, China

October 27, Tokyo, Japan

Each regional event features members of the GLOBALSOLUTIONSTM ecosystem of partners exhibiting proven, differentiated solutions in design enablement, mask services, assembly and test for the consumer, communications, computing and automotive sectors.

If you weren't at Quakecon 2011 last weekend and didn't get a chance to watch our live stream of the event, you can still catch it right here. What did we do at 3rd Annual PC Perspective Hardware Workshop? We gave out a TON of hardware and prizes thanks to our many sponsors (listing here) and also showed off some great case mods, some new technology including a 5 display capable Galaxy graphics card and of course, a demo from NVIDIA's own Tom Petersen.

Again, a HUGE thanks goes out to our sponsors for helping out with the event, providing interesting things to show off and prizes for all the gamers. We had a blast as did the 1100+ attendees and 2000+ viewers live online that day!! A big thanks specifically goes out to Corsair, NVIDIA and OCZ for exceptional help getting it all together!

Introduction, PCPer Hardware Workshop

The third and final day drew thousands of gamers and curious people to Quakecon's exhibition hall and Bring Your Own Computer (BYOC) area. Some gamers were pretty weary from all-night gaming sessions, while others continued to press on by playing Tribes: Ascend, Rage, Team Fortress 2, and Left 4 Dead 2. Others took time out from gaming to make the rounds to various panel discussions with community managers from Respawn, id Software, Bethesda Softworks, and Insomniac and learn more about first-person gaming from id Software's Tim Willits and other developers in the gaming industry.

Each day started with Ventrilo's Rage Quick Drive drawing that gave gamers an opportunity to win $1,000 and tickets for a chance to win a brand-new 2011 Molten Orange Ford F-150 Raptor SVT, complete with the Hennessey VelociRaptor 600 SC upgrade package. Today's quick drive drawing started with Marty Stratton from id Software crowd surfing at the main stage in the exhibition hall.

The most important difference about Quakecon this year is that they can finally, for the first time in years, promote an upcoming in-house title. RAGE was definitely all the rage this year as John Carmack spent the majority of his keynote discussing the technical decisions made during the game for the 360, for the PS3, and for the PC. The biggest take-away that a lead game programmer could learn from the keynote is that you should never tell the artist team when approached about design specifications, “Make beautiful stuff and we’ll figure out how to make it work.” However, for the rest of us not on iD’s programming department, we get to see what a comment like that looks like in the new RAGE trailer.

Reminded of USENET a decade ago, “Syntax Error: Asking for the best computer, money is no object.”

Something has us believing that this will be a very profitable year for Bethesda’s parent company, Zenimax. With two large games, RAGE and Elder Scrolls V, coming out this autumn from Zenimax we hopefully should see them able to reinvest and grow over the coming years. As for the game itself, I get three distinct vibes from the most recent cinematic trailer: The first is Doom 3 which is most felt in the intro as the player is loaded into the pod-like device; the second is Fallout 3 from characters interact; the third vibe I cannot pin against any given game and mostly consists of the vehicular aspect of the trailer. What does it remind our readers of? (Registration not required for commenting.)

Introduction, 20 years of id Software, Skyrim, Prey 2

To commemorate 20 years in the gaming industry, several senior members of id Software came together for a “20 Years of id Software” panel to relive some of the history and mystery surrounding the company. John Carmack, Todd Hollenshead, Kevin Cloud and Tim Willits gave Quakecon gamers a fresh and candid look at id Software's humble beginnings and an in-depth view of their philsophies on PC, console, and mobile gaming.

During the question and answer session, the panel was asked about their advice and opinions on becoming an artist and programmer and their vision of the future of PC and console gaming. At the end of the panel discussion, the id Software team thanked the Quake community for their continued support as well as the Quakecon volunteers for their commitment to making the annual event a success every year.

One pleasant surprise was having G4TV’s Morgan Webb as the panel moderator for the event. Webb was her usual smart and sassy self and helped make the event fun and lively for everyone. Overall, the event was very engaging and we got to see the id Software team in a different light that most gamers don't get to see from today's game developers.

Event Kickoff

id Software executives Todd Hollenshead, Paul Steed, and John Carmack provided the opening remarks to kick off the start of this year's Quakecon 2011 today at the Hilton Anatole in Dallas, Texas. Quakecon is the largest LAN party in North America and typically draws thousands of gamers from all over the world.

Hollenshead got the crowd going with several announcements for discounted games on Steam and the first public demonstration of The Elder Scrolls V: SkyRim. He also mentioned the first demo of sequel Prey 2. Every iOS game put out by id Software, which includes game titles like Rage, Doom II RPG, Wolfenstein, and others, will be 50 percent off from Thursday to Sunday. Hollenshead also challenges Quakecon participates and stated that if the Rage Facebook pages gets 100,000 likes by the end of the weekend, the Rage iOS games will be free for a limited time. PC gamers were not left in the cold as the Doom and Quake pack that includes every Doom and Quake game available on Steam can be purchased for $29.99. Gamers can also drop some cash for the Quakecon Pack, which includes every Bethesda Softworks and id Software title available on Steam for only $69.99. This price will be reduced for gamers who pre-order Rage, Skyrim or both game titles.

A lot of news is blowing up about the exciting conference happening right now called Quakercon. For those of us not lucky enough to bask in the PepsiCo subsidiary that popularized Amish oatmeal delight there is another, smaller conference going on right now called “Quakecon”. Frankly, I think they’re ripping off our wonderful breakfast food company. Still, if you cannot check out Quakercon treating us to tonnes of steamed meals – why not check out Quakecon treating us to tonnes of Steam deals!

Yes I realize there is no such thing as Quakercon… … yet.

In the event that you are following Quakecon and for some reason do not own many iD or Bethesda games, there is a bundle that will roll you pretty much entirely up to date for just shy of $70. The Quakecon Pack 2011 contains the following:

Quake III Arena

Quake IV

Wolfenstein 3D

The Ultimate Doom

Final DOOM

DOOM II

QUAKE

QUAKE II

QUAKE II Mission Pack: The Reckoning

QUAKE II Mission Pack: Ground Zero

QUAKE III: Team Arena

HeXen: Beyond Heretic

HeXen: Deathkings of the Dark Citadel

Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders

Spear of Destiny

Return to Castle Wolfenstein

QUAKE Mission Pack 2: Dissolution of Eternity

QUAKE Mission Pack 1: Scourge of Armagon

DOOM 3

HeXen II

DOOM 3 Resurrection of Evil

Master Levels for Doom II

Commander Keen

Rogue Warrior

The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind® Game of the Year Edition

Call of Cthulhu®: Dark Corners of the Earth

BRINK

Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition

Fallout: New Vegas

Hunted: The Demon’s Forge™

Fallout New Vegas: Dead Money

Fallout New Vegas: Honest Hearts

Fallout New Vegas: Old World Blues

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion® Game of the Year Edition Deluxe

If $70 is too much for you but you have plans to pre-order Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and RAGE: doing so will knock the price of this combo pack to $40. Also, you will likely not even install a third of this pack at best, especially if you plan on putting a dent in to RAGE and Skyrim.